michael mina. thank you for unionijoining us. >> happy to be here.erent components of the tests and how it absorbs dna and how the high number of cycles may be over shooting our needs? >> i think in general, i wanted to be clear that it is not showing false positives. what it is showing is those people with high numbers may have been infectious but probably were last week or two or three weeks ago. they were not infectious at one point. the positives mean something. >> you have the viral material. the way we are measuring it and the number of cycle, another way of sensitivity, how deeply you look into somebody. >> a lot of positives are likely contagious but no longer are. these tests can pick up. >> that has huge impliatiocatio because it would change our schooling. we have one kid tested positive, the whole school or class shuts down. no need for that. >> i agree to an extent, if the child is positive, it is likely there may be more children infected other people a week ago. sensitivity is good, how is the right person to quarantine at the right ti

michael mina from harvard school of public health. thanks so much for time. >> thanks very much. f:>> woodrhere are troubles in the skies. major airlines are sending out warnings about huge losses and they are making pleas for help in big way. tens of thousands of flights are cancelled for the fall, plus change fees are now eliminat to attract travelers. paul solman has the story for our series, "making sense." >> all of these people on the plane, i didn't get in nobody's face. >> reporter: call them mask wars, beinwaged on tarmacs everywhere. >> in my last flight there was refused to wear a mask, and so they had to bring in airport security a the person from airport security said, like, hey, we already had this conversation at the gate. and the person said no. and so airport security took (happlauseh) plane. >> reporter: as they escorted this woman off, to a sitting ovation. no wonder so many passengers now have a fear of flying. even nick ewen, an airlines list. >> i have personally not taken a flight since march 1, and that is pret

michael mina. >> thanks a lot, happy to be here. >> did i get the printer right, i described the tests correctly, how it absorbs dna and the high range of cycles may be overshooting our needs? >> i think in general. i want it to be clear, it's not necessarily showing false positives, what it's often showing, is those people with the very high numbers might have been infectious, but probably were last week or two or three weeks ago, they were infectious at the right time. >> the positive means something, you have the viral material. but the way that we're measuring it and the number of cycles, which is another way of saying sensitivity, how deeply you look into somebody. you wind up capturing a lot of people as positive who are not necessarily contagious, right? >> that's correct. a lot of the positives that we find are likely people that maybe were contagious last week or a few weeks ago, but no longer are, these tests can pick up the remnants of the previous infection. >> that has huge implication

harvard epidemiologist michael mina says widespread use of home tests could help contain outbreaks at the source and crush them in as little as a month. >> the accuracy of them to detect people who are most likely to transmit to other people can get very, very high, probably in the high 90 percentiles. >> o'donnell: there are currently no f.d.a.-approved home coronavirus tests, but more than two dozen companies are racing to develop one, including orasure technologies, which is the only company with an approved at-home test for infectious disease. >> an patient can get the results in the comfort of their own homes in about 20 or 40 minutes. it will be done with a nasal swab, and it's read very much like a pregnancy test. >> o'donnell: orasure c.e.o. stephen tang says his company is close. >> we are on a regulatory pathway to seek emergency use authorization for product launch in the fourth quarter of this year, so before the end of 2020. >> o'donnell: so that's coming soon. while there is some concern about the accuracy of home tests, there's agreement among experts that america needs

michael mina who i know you know would be like putting in your contact lenses, you can get a test and if you're negative fine but if you're not you can be isolated. this is a contentious discussion point, but is it -- is it feasible, i mean, can we get to that point, and, you know, again, should we have been at that point? >> so, i think we can get to that point. we are not there now. we couldn't have been here now. i mean, there's been no limitations on money, research, motivation. >> you've had everything that you need. gotten all the resources that you need in order to do whatever you needed to do? >> right. there are very big expectations. don't get caught up on utopian views. why can't very cured all of cancer yet? well, it takes time. we've compressed the time as much as possible. we're not in a situation now where we have a highly accurate home test. we're getting close. we really are getting close. there are a number of innovators, some supported by the red "x" program and some by barta and some under private support that we're getting close to that. not to 100 million level a

mina but it does look as though this is yet another round of diplomatic caton mouse the 2 journalists in question are bill burton was a correspondent for australia's public broadcaster the a.b.c. and michaelsmith from the australia financial review 10 days ago chinese police appeared at both of their houses after midnight and told them that they were quote persons of interest in another case regarding the detention of another australian journalist chang lay who's been held by beijing or thirty's since august 14th now the offices also told bottles and smith that they were barred from leaving china at which point they obviously fled the australian embassy from where they were sent home this past monday the chinese foreign ministry has said that the journalists were being questioned as part of quote normal enforcement of law but the plot to 2nd since the chinese state news agency shin wa reported that back in june australian agencies actually conducted a number of raids on chinese journalists homes in australia so this whole episode could well be a direct retaliation especially given birth was in smith with the only australian journalist still working in china ok thank you flo in western pol